Just Like New Times
by Zazeems
Summary: After bumping into an old friend, their plans for journeys for old times' sake turn sour, as a crash landing in the past turns out to be anything but accidental. Pre 'Rose' 9th Doctor.
1. Chapter 1

The time was irrelevant, although at a wild guess it was most probably sometime between about 10,000,000 BC, and 10,000 AD, local time. All things considered, this was a fairly precise estimate. A man lay spread-eagled on his back, bathed in the ethereal orange glow that seemingly emanated from his surroundings in their entirety, rather than from any discernible source. It was undoubtedly this that moments later caused the face of his previously unconscious form to twitch, the eyes fluttering from the irritation of the light. He sat up, surveying his surroundings with only mild interest. The realisation that he'd awoke on a raised platform in the centre of a huge room dominated by a console desk apparently left him quite unperturbed. Indeed, he rose to his feet and stood thoughtfully for a moment, considering his surroundings, before flicking a switch on the console before him.

"List for automatic playback in two hours, recalibrate new brake system before trying to make planet-fall again."

The man had a gritty yet authoritative voice, its accent probably originating from one of the rose counties, most likely somewhere around Prestwich or Salford. The man looked down at himself, furtively tugging at the v neck of his t-shirt.

"And find a jacket; I must look ridiculous in just this thing"

As coherence slowly filtered back through his angular features he flicked the switch back and began typing furiously at a keypad with one hand, whilst the other still wrung the shirt. A screen to his right plipped and slowly spluttered into life. A grainy neon image appeared in the middle of the display.

POST DISPLACEMENT TIME ESTIMATE:  
Thursday. Coming around for about teatime. Precisely.

On the whole this wasn't entirely helpful. In turn more letters materialised below.

TARDIS LOCATION:

Earth.

The man smiled, and bustled off through a doorway at the back of the room. The corridor that lay beyond would have looked like a set from a low-budget sci-fi television programme, had it not been for the fact that it stretched quite literally as far as the eye could see. About 20 yards along it the man entered a door on the left. Seconds later he stepped back out, wearing a cricket sweater and a look of intense confusion. He retreated, and returned once more, this time draped in a velvet smoking jacket. Another trip and he was wearing a curious pullover with question marks knitted into the weave. The man looked at the sign on the door, and began to laugh. An excursion through the door immediately to the right, and a battered leather jacket graced his shoulders. He rubbed his hands together and bounded back through the console room towards a pair of shabby blue doors. As he reached them they rattled violently, an anxious yell issuing from the other side.

"Okay. That's not usually good."

...

Tennyson Gardens was a perfectly ordinary street, bordered by perfectly ordinary houses, lived in by perfectly ordinary people who drove just some of the perfectly ordinary cars parked on the perfectly ordinary pavement. However there were two things in the street that were entirely extraordinary. One had yet to appear, and would be materialising in a few moments. The second was a girl. The extent of her remarkableness was exacerbated somewhat by how remarkably unremarkable she appeared. An oversized t-shirt, black skirt and ray ban sunglasses betrayed nothing of her nature, and the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that apart from pretty features and an attractive figure, there was nothing particularly special about her. However, due to this being completely and unequivocally untrue, such a patently ordinary place would seem an untenable position for a girl as innately remarkable as the one in question. Surely, after all that had happened, something exciting, something out of the ordinary, would happen to her.

Indeed, a train of thought almost identical to this was forming in her mind. But she dismissed it immediately. She started striding more purposefully and tried to put the idea from her mind. The man she was thinking of had gone, and with every passing day the likelihood of his re-appearance diminished. The distinctive sound that she still listened out for every day would not return, no matter how hard she-

She stopped. It couldn't be. At this exact moment, fate had decided to play silly buggers with her, and the wind had blown in such a way as to resemble a scraping, grinding sound. A sound that, was growing LOUDER? She spun round. Despite not trying to get her hopes up, she was pretty sure that the last police box in Perivale had been removed at least 15 years before, and in any case, the one before her was flickering in and out of solid form the way only the TARDIS could.

...

The doors shuddered again, accompanied once more by shouts. The man flung the door open, and was confronted by a girl with long mousy hair now beating her fist against thin air, as she did so glaring at him with something between excitement and contempt.

"PROFESSOR?"

The man balked. "What... No. I mean... how do you...?"

"Who the hell are you?!"

The man looked at her, before a sudden burst of comprehension transposed a huge smile onto his face. "It's you! I never thought I'd see the day!"

The girl reared forwards. "Listen mister, I don't know who you are, but you'd better tell me what you've done with the Doctor and what you're doing in his TARDIS right now!"

"I AM the Doctor. Ace, it's me."

**A/N: This is the beginning of my first Doctor Who story. I'm not entirely sure where it's going yet, or whether I'll develop it into a full story. I know there's very little here, but please tell me what you think of it. Cheers :D**


	2. Chapter 2

Ace stared. "You're the Doctor?" she asked incredulously.

"Indeedy. That's me."

"No you're not. You're clearly not! Don't try to pull some ridiculous trick on me. How do you know who I am?"

The Doctor leaned against the door frame of the TARDIS and sighed. "I've regenerated... twice actually. I'm the same man you knew, but in a different body."

Ace continued to square up to him, negating the height differential by giving him a look of pure bile. "Alright then" she began, every syllable laced with malicious glee. "If you really are the Doctor, then tell me something only the Doctor could know."

"Hmm." The Doctor twisted his face. "Well you've got me there. There's no way I could possibly know about first meeting you on Iceworld, or about you getting taken there in a time storm." He raised his eyebrows at her. "There's no way I could know about the Daleks in London in 1963, or Fenric in 1943, or The Kandy Man, or the Gods of Ragnarök, or that bloody Nitro-9 you insisted on making."

Ace looked stunned. She backed away, holding her hands out as if to stop his torrent of recollections.

"Remember those Neo-Nazis and Cybermen and that batty old witch who were after the Nemesis? Remember how your tape deck got blasted by that Dalek in the lab at Coal Hill School? Remember whe-"

"OKAY! I GET IT! But... how can you be here? Why are you here? ... You left me."

A grimace. A hastened smile. A flourish of the arm. "How about you come in and I tell you all about it?"

"You want me to come back?"

"Well, if you want to."

"I haven't got anything with me."

"Do you need anything?"

Ace grinned and lunged forward into the TARDIS; "Wow... you've redecorated in here!"

The Doctor pulled the doors shut and wandered back in after her. "Well, a change of scenery every few decades can't hurt. What year is it out there?"

"You mean where you just picked me up? 1991. I... I haven't seen you for two years. You just dropped me off and left, said you had important business to attend to, but that you'd see me again."

"I did have business. The Master, to be precise. He caused all sorts of bother. It was sort of down to him that I died that particular time."

"And that's why you're different now, right?"

"Well not entirely, the version of me that you knew died then. In all honesty I was fairly disappointed, as far as deaths go it was a bit mundane, not at all heroic. My first proper visit to America, and they welcomed me by meddling with my circulatory system. As it happens I regenerated again later, but you don't need to know about that."

"I'd sort of stopped thinking you were going to come back."

"Of course I'd come back! Well, I just have done haven't I?"

"You seemed pretty surprised to see me. Are you sure you meant to land where you did?"

The Doctor squirmed, gesturing feebly in what he obviously hoped was a placatory fashion. "I didn't strictly mean to land there no. But I was planning on coming back to visit you again. Me and the TARDIS have a connection - she probably sensed how much I wanted to see you and took me here."

Ace leaned on the railing of the console platform, resolutely staring at her boots. Then she laughed. "I know you probably weren't planning on coming back Professor, and if so, that's fine. But I've missed this. I've missed you. The idiotic explanations, and more importantly, the lack of explanations. I've missed that." She bit her lip and looked up, grinning at him once more. "I've just got one thing to ask you."

"Oh?"

"What's with the new you?"

"You know perfectly well! I regenerated, I just sai-"

"No, I mean, the leather jacket, the crew cut hair... the northern accent. The fact that you're actually answering my questions! Do you usually change this much after a regeneration?"

"I usually change a fair bit, although even I'll admit that this one was a bit drastic."

"Is there a reason for that? Did you do loads of really heavy stuff with the body you had before this one or something?"

The Doctor put his finger to his lips. "That Ace, does not concern you."

Ace leapt towards him, laughing. "That's more like my Doctor!" She turned to face the console, wiggling her fingers in mid-air excitedly. "So Professor... what now?"

"Well, I've just got back from Krillia. Not a particularly pleasant planet what with the locals and all. So, I feel like a bit of a holiday. Where shall we go?"

"Show me the future! Show me what Earth will be like in the future!"

The Doctor marched to and fro around the console desk, his hands flying over the mass of controls before him. He stopped in front of a screen. "Ah... yeah, I need to fix that."

"Fix what?"

"The parking brake's a tad bust. My landing was more than a little rough." He prostrated himself and disappeared beneath the console desk. "Won't take a minute." In fact over six passed before the legs issuing from under the desk spoke once more. "I don't understand."

"What?"

"There's nothing wrong with the brake. I thought there couldn't be." The Doctor slid forwards back onto the TARDIS floor. "It's brand new. Got it out of a Vauxhall Cavalier." He tapped a handbrake stick on the console desk. "See? I like using human stuff. Human stuff's good."

"Doctor, are we going?"

"Oh... yeah." He let the handbrake off, his eyes twinkling. "How far shall we go?"

"Surprise me."

The Doctor threw a switch and the familiar grinding, scraping sound started up once more. The TARDIS drifted serenely through space for a few moments, Ace enjoying the feeling that was like no other. Then there was a lurch, a crunch, and the TARDIS began buffeting wildly from side to side like a tossing ship, sparks bursting from its mechanics.

"Do you usually fly like this these days?"

"No, there's something pulling us off course, I'm finding it nigh on impossible to keep our five dimensional progressive spatial trajectories at equilibrium."

"Professor, I'm getting time sick!"

"Not exactly the M4, eh?"

"The M4 doesn't travel through time and space!"

"Well, technically when you're travelling between two fixed locations that haven't experienced chronological displacement... say – Bristol and Slough, in a linear sense you're actually tra-"

"Oh do shut up."

The pair staggered to and fro across the console platform, Ace using the handrails for support, the Doctor maintaining a level of balance that under the circumstances required liberal arm flailing and a leaden footed stomp.

"So there's nothing you can do?" Ace cried, losing her grip and sliding 7 feet across the platform.

"Not until we get there."

"When will that be?"

There was an almighty bang, the Doctor and Ace were thrown to the ground, and the room filled with thick, acrid smoke.

"Just about now I'd say." The Doctor ambled forwards and offered his hand to Ace. She took it only grudgingly.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know!" The Doctor exclaimed this in the manner of a person unwrapping a christmas present.

"Are we going to find out?" Ace smiled. Even in a new body, the Doctor's infectious enthusiasm was ubiquitous.

"Yeah, I suppose we should shouldn't we?

They fought through the smoke, attempting unsuccessfully to waft it away from their eyes. By the time they were nearing the doors, Ace was spluttering.

"Doctor, what is this?" she gagged. "It smells of nail varnish remover."

The Doctor crinkled his nose. "I think it might be cordite. Which is weird, because there's nothi-"

"Can we just get outside, before we start talking about where it's coming from?".

The Doctor nodded, again something of the small Scotsman that Ace knew flashing across his face. "Your wish is my command good lady." He swung open the doors, and breathed in deeply, preparing to receive the extraordinary refreshment of clean air. He choked. The smell was infinitely more foul out here, and although different to that inside the TARDIS, there was smoke out here too. This brought on something of a change in him. He merely stood for half a minute, arms outstretched, fingers rubbing together as if trying to feel the smoke. Eventually he spun to face Ace, putting a finger to his lips. "I have no idea where we are. I don't even know whether this air is safe for us to be breathing. Keep quiet."

"How can you not know where we are? YOU LANDED HERE!"

Looking at him properly, Ace realised the Doctor's eyes were filled with panic as he frantically shushed her once more. His demeanour was one that she had never seen before. It was one of perturbation, perhaps even fear. He leaned in close to her on his way back into the TARDIS:"There's one thing you've got to know about this version of me. I've done and experienced so many more things since I last saw you." He said the words savagely, spitting them out as if they were venom. "One of those things is war." A break in the thick smoke revealed his face in more detail. Spittle bordered his mouth and his eyes were flaming and flickering with an intensity that she found similar, but was not benign as she was used to. "I learned that war more than anything is a feeling, a state of mind. An atmosphere of cowering, suffering and filth. It's something that you sense. And this is the first time I've sensed it in a long time." He slipped past her back into the TARDIS. "We're somewhere terrible. Somewhere exceedingly dangerous."

Ace looked back into the TARDIS. She herself felt uneasy out here, but as the man behind her ploughed back and forth through the smoke, ferociously attacking the console controls, she reflected that he was currently being just as terrifying as anything that could be out here. After about a minute he turned back. He looked utterly devastated.

"We didn't go forward in time."

"Where are we then?" Ace called through the fog.

"We're near the town of Pozières in France."

"We're on Earth?" Ace looked around. "Then why is there all th-"

Ace stopped talking abruptly. The Doctor flung himself back across the console room and out of the TARDIS. The reason for her silence became apparent immediately. Three men were appearing out of the mist, all in grey tunics and spiked helmets, and all, apparently armed. They raised their weapons, pointing them at Ace.

"Put your hands up! Hands up now! Surrender or we shoot!"

As they drew nearer the one furthest left noticed the Doctor. He swung what was now identifiable as a rifle round to face him. He was filthy and looked terrified, crying "Put your hands up!" with as much authority as his wavering voice would allow.

As Ace and the Doctor complied, the three soldiers bustled around them, drinking in what they were seeing, all the time keeping their quarry at gunpoint.

"Doctor?" Ace glanced over at him nervously. "You said we were in France."

The Doctor had his eyes shut. He looked as if he were about to cry. "We are. On the 22nd July 1916. The River Somme is about 5 miles to our left. Ace. Welcome to hell on Earth."

**A/N: In my head I imagine this to be an episode, and this is where I'd roll the titles, probably with the original 1963-1969 theme song. I advise you to YouTube it and listen for effect at this point ;)**


	3. Chapter 3

The three soldiers stared gobsmacked at the scene before them. Two people in civilian clothes, although admittedly strange ones, standing in front of a fibreglass blue box. The soldier in the middle, presumably the most senior, took charge, squelching forward through the churned up ground.

"How did you get here?"

The figure on the right in the leather jacket jerked his head backwards, he seemed to be re-composing himself. "We flew in in that box."

A cock of a gun. "Don't be ridiculous. How in the name of God did you get here, and why?"

"_I told you. _We arrived here in that box." He spoke perfectly calmly, but his voice had an undisguised vehemence, each syllable carrying an extraordinary level of gravitas.

The man in the middle seemed slightly more timid, but continued all the same.

"You're both clearly civilians! What are you doing here? Why are you here? You… you shouldn't be here."

The jacketed man reached into his inside pocket, withdrawing a piece of paper. He held it up and approached the middle soldier, who immediately lowered his rifle and gestured at the others to do the same.

"Orders from the Kaiser himself. That box behind me could very well be the saviour of the fatherland. It's on its first test run." He stepped back and surveyed the three disdainfully. "And you are?"

The man in the middle stood up straight and stepped forwards. "Sergeant Jan Dietrich" he gestured to his left and right "this is Private Schulte and Private Rolfes. 117th Infantry. We do apologise sir. If we had known, we would not have been so..." his words dissolved, and he merely saluted instead.

"Please don't do that."

"Of course sir.

"Don't call me sir. I'm the Doctor."

For the first time the girl standing to his right spoke. "And I'm Ace."

The Doctor nodded, his face finally beginning to properly relax, the colour returning. "She's an associate of mine." He remarked, as an answer to the soldiers' quizzical stares.

"We'll need to get to a command post and organise transport for your device"

The Doctor nodded. "Excellent" he replied hoarsely. "Lead the way".

The three soldiers set off, tramping resignedly, glancing over their shoulders at the pair behind them, who now they were moving realised quite how churned up and muddy the ground was. Ace moved in close to the Doctor.

"Why don't we just leave Professor? Slip back in the TARDIS and go? I mean, you can barely breathe out here." She illustrated her point by having a coughing fit.

"We can't. Something brought us here, we were pulled off course. Chances are if we tried to leave we'd just be pulled back again."

"Who'd want us _here_?" she choked.

"I don't know, but I'm bloody glad I managed to use the psychic paper to get these blokes on side. Hopefully they'll be able to help us. Remember when I said it smelled of cordite? All this smoke's from a bombardment. We'll need them to help us move the TARDIS, or she could well be blown to pieces."

"You want help from them? Professor…they're German"

The Doctor looked at her severely. "And what difference does that make?"

"I don't know, it's just…" She lowered her voice. "We fought against them, they're the invaders, we're helping the French fight them back. How can we trust them?"

"Ace" The Doctor replied reproachfully, his face falling, almost as if disappointed in her. "These men aren't fighting for Germany. Not anymore. They're fighting to live. Fighting for their friends, and wives and children. We're two years into this war. Do you really think any of these men care about the moral or strategic purpose of what they're doing? This isn't a war, it's a tragedy. He gestured forwards "and they're just as much victims as anybody else."

"Okay, I get the picture."

One of the privates called over his shoulder through the smoke. "We're nearing a support trench now sir." The Doctor looked piercingly at Ace.

"You will. You will get the picture."

The 3 grey clad soldiers stumbled clumsily over a sandbag parapet, the mud caked over the lower halves of their uniforms flaking off in clumps against the rough hessian. The Doctor leapt the 7 foot drop with surprising agility, and went to help Ace down, only to see one of the privates already setting her on her feet. She smiled nervously. Being lifted around the Battle of the Somme by a German soldier hadn't exactly been what she'd been expecting on her first trip back in the TARDIS. The soldier smiled back, seemingly just as nervously. His face was a dull mass of mud, flecked with the maroon slashes of scabbed over flesh wounds. And yet… a pair of teal eyes glanced around at its centre, darting upwards momentarily, as if embarrassed by the hopelessly matted hair creeping out from under the helmet above. He couldn't be more than nineteen. As they started walking, Ace smiled at him again, this time more genuinely.

"Thanks. What was it, Rolfe-"

"Ernst." He let his rifle swing at his side, so as to use his free hand to fidget with his epaulettes. "My name's Ernst."

They tramped on along the wooden boards, following the others. The trench at this point seemed pretty well built, with only minor disturbances to the side construction, although much more Ace couldn't make out through the stifling smoke.

"What's somebody like you doing here? This is no place for a girl."

Ace cast around wildly for an excuse, what had the Doctor told them?

"I'm on official business. Testing that box you saw. It's new technology."

"Orders from the Kaiser, was it?"

"Precisely."

"Someone like you working for the army? Seems odd."

"Someone like me?"

"Well. You're a girl, who's young, and, you know…" his words faded. "It's odd."

"Well." Ace chirped. "It has its uses."

They walked along in silence for a little more, slightly further back from the other three. Ernst looked round again.

"You know it's funny. You speak perfect German, and you clearly have the credentials, but your accent sounds slightly-"

She looked at him quizzically.

"Almost English."

"Maybe there's a reason for that too. Orders from the Kaiser." She tried to look arresting and self-important, but thought she might have just looked suspicious. In front, The Doctor turned.

"Now Ace, don't go saying any more, or we might just end up with half of Berlin after us."

Ace took the well-disguised hint, and kept quiet. Up ahead, the trench turned into a T-junction. Schulte turned left and gestured.

"Captain Lange's command dugout is just down here. He'll be able to help you with your device."

They continued on for about 30 feet to a wooden opening built into the wall of the trench. Dietrich showed The Doctor and Ace in, through corrugated iron and sandbagged walls into a dingy candlelit room. The walls were bare earth, wooden beams supporting a roof that was only just high enough to stand up underneath. A rough wooden desk lay in the centre, behind which sat a man. He looked up.

"Ah, Dietrich. How's the weather out there? If this smoke doesn't clear soon w-"He broke off as he caught sight of the Doctor and Ace entering the dugout along with the three men of the patrol.

"Hauptmann." Began Dietrich. "These two were out in open land next to support Trench D. They have a device with them that they claim are testing for the Reich, and they have the credentials to prove it.

The Captain stood up and wandered over to the group. "Mmm. And can I see your papers?"

The Doctor again produced a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to Lange, who stared for a moment, before nodding curtly. "Yes, that all seems to be in order. What are your names? And what can we do for you?"

"I'm the Doctor. This is Ace. We need transport for our device. It's on a test run and has landed in this sector of the line." The Doctor turned to Dietrich. "Where did you say? Near support Trench D."

Again the Captain merely nodded. "And why should I risk my men's lives in order to recover your device?"

The Doctor rose to his fullest height, squaring up to the officer before him. "Because, what did you say your name was? Lange. The device that is stranded out there could change the course of the war in favour of the fatherland, and if it is so much as scratched because of your delay, I'll see that you're court martialled and shot within the week. Do I make myself clear?"

Lange backed away and gulped, twisting his face as if trying to eat his own tongue. "Yes, well. I suppose we could send a small scout party to recover it. It'll be dangerous though, going out into the open like that."

"Not so sir" Dietrich interjected. "The wind hasn't picked up anywhere near as much as we thought it would. There's still ample smoke cover."

"Well in that case…" Lange paused for a moment, marching round the dugout, before speaking loudly; a belated attempt to regain some sort of authority. "C Company can retrieve it. I want it done quickly, and with minimal risk. You three" he stabbed at the air thrice in the direction of his patrol soldiers, "rouse C Company, and bring them outside this command post for briefing." Dietrich, Rolfes and Schulte left.

"So I take it you can't tell me anything at all about the nature of this device, or your purpose here."

The Doctor grimaced convincingly. "I'm afraid not Captain."

The Captain reciprocated. "I thought as much. Is there anything you can tell me at all?"

"Like what?"

"Like why the Reich has seen it fit" he nodded towards Ace "to send a young woman into the field of battle."

"Oh, so I can't go into a battlefield because I'm a woman? Just who the hell do you think you're talking to?"

The Doctor put his hand on her shoulder. "Ace, leave it."

Lange looked if possible, even more abashed than after The Doctor's tirade at him. "I merely meant…" He abandoned his sentence wholesale, and the room lapsed into an uneasy silence. Mercifully, around a minute later the patrol returned.

"Sir." It was Dietrich. "We're ready, they know what we're looking for."

Lange marched through the entrance of the dugout, gesturing at Ace and The Doctor to do the same. Out in the Trench around a dozen men stood in a column, the recognisable faces of Dietrich, Rolfes and Schulte heading the group.

"Right men. Dietrich and 3 Patrol found the device. It's near support Trench D. It needs retrieving and bringing back here to a safe location. We've got to move it quickly, before the smoke cover clears." Lange removed a wooden handled revolver and held it aloft. "Move out." As the soldiers began filing past, the Doctor burst forward, falling in with the men at the front. Lange and Dietrich were having a hushed discussion.

"Don't you think you should tell line command that this has happened? We are going out on a sortie… of sorts."

"Yes, I suppose we should. We'll have to radio and tell them the details. What does this thing even look like?"

Dietrich deflated slightly. "It's a… well it's a-"

The Doctor's head appeared from behind. "It's a blue box." He barged his way between them. "About eight feet tall. Little telephone behind the door." He nodded portentously at Dietrich. "Very cutting edge."

Lange stopped, the column of men behind him bumping into each other and slipping from the duckboards in surprise. "A… blue box?"

The Doctor adopted the demeanour of one speaking to a toddler. "Yes." He leaned in kindly. "That's right."

"I… I see." He composed himself once more, and resumed walking. "Right men." He brandished the revolver once more. "Let's move! Sergeant Dietrich, we're following you. We've got to get this thing back and make it secure."

They rounded a corner, reaching the narrow parapet from whence they had come. Dietrich clambered up over it, followed by Lange and the Doctor.

"Sir, the smoke cover is lifting fast, the wind's getting up, we'll have to move qui-"

"Where's Ace?" The Doctor cut across him.

"Here Professor!" She bobbed up above the sandbags, being helped, not unwillingly, by the blue- eyed Rolfes, and scampered forwards to the head of the queue of soldiers, slipping in next to the Doctor, who put his arm around her.

"We'll get this done, then we'll go behind the lines and sort out why we're in this time period. I don't much like being here." He muttered under his breath.

"You're telling me? I've just spent the last 15 minutes being leered at by a dozen German soldiers."

"You didn't look like you were too bothered by it to me."

She opened her mouth to retort, but at that moment Dietrich pointed and cried:

"There!"

A gust of wind, and the TARDIS, listing slightly to one side in the mud, was momentarily visible through the swirling smoke, about 20 feet away. Lange burst forwards.

"Right men!" He yelled over his shoulder. "Let's retrieve this TARDIS before the smoke cover clears, GO!"

He managed 3 paces before he was bundled into by The Doctor.

"HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS!?" he screamed, one hand clutched at the captain's throat, the other wrenching him by the lapel. "How do you know what she's called!? I didn't tell you."

Understandably, the soldiers in attendance didn't take kindly to a stranger in civilian clothes throttling their captain, and all raised their guns. Dietrich grabbed The Doctor's arm.

"What in the name of God is this? Doctor, what ar-"

His sentence was cut short by a sharp _'__thrup'_ that seemed to permeate the air all around them. The Doctor temporarily suspended his remonstrations to look round with the others. At the head of the queue, Private Schulte looked down slowly, examining the blood flowing from the half inch hole in his tunic. A confused glance around later, he stumbled to his right and collapsed into the mud.

**A/N: With the story getting going, it'd be nice if you'd tell me what you think of it so far :)**


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